Susan Mallery on how friendship starts

Finding our one true, romantic love is important, but it’s not the only cornerstone relationship of a happy life. We have just as deep a need for friends. The craving for connection is fundamental and universal, and so we search for our tribe.

The infinite variations of friendship fascinate me. How does someone transition from stranger to acquaintance to friend? It’s magic!

There’s something in each of us that responds to something in the people who become our closest friends. Often, it’s almost instantaneous. We meet, we click. Other times, it takes a little longer for that deep bond to form. And sometimes, we don’t remember not being friends with this special person because she’s been in our lives since we were young.

I remember meeting each of my closest friends almost as clearly as I remember meeting my husband. Right from the first, I felt energized around these women. We got each other. We laughed at the same things. The same stories tugged our hearts. We might not agree about everything, but we view the world through a similar lens. We share a belief that people are basically good and that the world is a just place.

I write relationship books. With my Fool’s Gold romances, the main relationship is the romance, while female friendship is a strong supporting theme. With my women’s fiction books, the focus is reversed. In Three Sisters, now in mass market paperback, the women are brought together by geography. They’re next door neighbors, virtual strangers living in three Queen Anne homes on the highest hill on Blackberry Island. When the book starts, they have no idea they’re going to become best friends, that they’ll help each other through some of the happiest and most heartbreaking times of their lives.

In March, I’ll release The Girls of Mischief Bay, featuring three women whose friendship sparked with the shared experience of stretching their bodies in unnatural ways—they were the only three who didn’t flake out of Pilates class every Friday. It’s hard not to bond with women who see you looking like an idiot, but who like you anyway.

What do you remember about meeting your closest friends? Was it love at first sight, or did it take a while for the friendship to develop?

New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery has won the hearts of millions of readers around the world with books described as “immensely entertaining, intensely emotional” (RT Book Reviews), “hilarious” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram) and “heartwarming” (Publishers Weekly). One major retailer recently described her as “the queen of romantic fiction.” While she deeply appreciates the accolades of critics and booksellers, Mallery is even more honored by the enthusiasm of her readers and the word of mouth that catapults her toward the top of the bestsellers lists time and again. Mallery lives in not-so-sunny Seattle with her husband and a toy poodle who makes her laugh every day and who’s not even a little bit impressed by her growing fame.